The college basketball coaching carousel accelerated dramatically in 2021 after a slow turn in 2020 amid the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. While some suspected schools would again be slow to fire coaches this offseason, any trepidation quickly faded as several major programs made changes and a few big-name coaches retired.
Among the most notable schools entering the fray were Arizona, Indiana, Texas and North Carolina in a cycle that saw coaches from a variety of backgrounds get new opportunities. Just at major schools alone, there were promotions from within, hirings of first-time head coaches, hirings of NBA coaches and poaches from other programs.
Between the coaching carousel chaos and all the activity on the transfer portal, college basketball’s offseason news cycle seemed busier than ever this spring and into the summer. Now that things have slowed down in the college basketball world, let’s reflect on which schools fared best in their coaching searches.
Earlier we looked at the coaching hires from four years ago, grading them out after a full recruiting cycle and last week we looked at the top first-year hires from the 2020-21 season so here are the grades and explanations for the top hires of the 2021 cycle.